I was wondering if any other members are having trouble with squash bugs aka pumpkin bugs on there squash and zuccini plants? Last year was my first garden and my wife and I read where the squash bugs shouldn't be there since the land we made our garden on hasn't had a garden on it in years and years. What these pesky little suckers do is hang out on the plant and feed on it and when they do they inject a bacteria that will kill the squash/zuccini. When the plant dies it will just wilt and look like it hasn't had water. What we have been doing is every Wednesday and Saturday we pluck the bugs off and cut out the eggs they lay on the plant. We also heard to plant marigolds around your garden well we planted marigolds between all 20 plants. We have already had to pull up about 5-6 plants luckily we have 2 plants at each mound. Another thing is we have 4 hives of bees that we don't want to kill so the normal sevin dusting will not work because they may take the sevin into hive and end up killing all of them. Any suggestions?

I haven't had the problem this year in the squash and zuccini plants like I have had in years past. KNOCK ON WOOD But, in the past my father in-law taght me to spray sevin in the heat of the day at the base of the plant where the stem goes into the ground. It seems the little buggers hide in the shade of the plant and don't like the heat. Well they don't like the sevin either. Maybe that is why I haven't had much trouble this year, in fact I haven't had to spray yet at all and I've been eating the squash and zucc's for 2 weeks now. He told me not to spray the hole plant or the flowers of course but only the stem at the ground. It also stops the worm from boring a hole into the plant too!

By the way, can you give me a good tip on keeping the crows from eating the corn as soon as it gets up about 6 inches? I'm on my third planting now and I have lost probally 75% already.

I only have about 7 rows of corn and my rows are 90 feet. So if you if you have ALOT of corn my method will not work for you unless you have lots of time I put a stake every 10 feet and just run fishing line in X patterns and then I tie on pie pans with a screw attached so when the wind blows a little the screw hits the pie pan. This works good for me, when the corn gets big enough it time to cultivate and I take down the line.

DavidThanks for that advice. I haven't heard of doing that for corn. I will try it. I have 12 or 13 rows about 100 feet wide or just a tad less. Darn olde crows, we got plenty of road kill for them to peck at and from what I read on the internet, that corn is there preferred diet. Wouldn't be so bad if it was 10 or 20 stalks but several hundred makes me furious- especially at the price of silver queen in the area. After you get done with the crows then you have to deal with the deer, the corn worm in the ear, then the Japeneese beetle eating the silks and killing the end of the ear, and of the coarse the raccoons riping the stalk to shreads- WHEW BUT I SURE DO LOVE THE SILVER QUEEN CORN

I spray everything with Max and it helps some, but you have to spray it every day or two because more bugs fly in and continue where the others left off. ( I know you guys object to good chems, but I cant farm without them) thanks; sonny

For squash or zucheni slit the stem lengthwise, remove the bug and apply chlorox to prevent infection. Works like a charm. Beverly forbids any sprays once the seeds are planted. She has the best garden I have ever seen. She been planting this one since 1960. We moved into the house in September 1959 too late to plant other than lettice. She had a garden at the two familoy house we rented for the first 4 years of our marrage. She and her dad had one eversince she was a snot nosed kid. My family had a garden since WWII victory gardens and we never sprayed either.Moment of truth I do use rondup in the spring before turning the garden over. We use the grass clippings from 5 of our neighbors as mulch and turn in 60 to 80 bags of loaves each year for a 50 by 30 garden.

Bill

"Life's tough.It's even tougher if you're stupid."- John Wayne

" We hang petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."- Aesop